Waning Crescent on . The illuminated surface of the moon is 1% and getting smaller. The lunar cycle is 28 days old.
The moon rises after midnight to early morning and sets in the afternoon. It is visible in the early morning low to the east.
Slide horizontally to discover the moon phase on nearby dates.
Main moon phases of the following lunar cycle.
Moon is passing about ∠17° of ♐ Sagittarius tropical zodiac sector.
Previous main lunar phase is the Last Quarter before 5 days on 16 December 2003 at 17:42.
Next Full Moon is the Wolf Moon of January 2004 after 16 days on 7 January 2004 at 15:40.
There is medium ocean tide on this date. Sun and Moon gravitational forces are not aligned, but meet at very acute angle, so their combined tidal force is moderate.
Lunar disc appears visually 1% wider than solar disc. Moon and Sun apparent angular diameters are ∠1970" and ∠1951".
The Moon is 28 days old and navigating from the second to the final part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 48 of Meeus index or 1001 from Brown series.
The length of this lunation is 29 days, 10 hours and 44 minutes and it is 38 minutes shorter than the upcoming lunation's length. The lengths of the following synodic months are going to increase with the lunar orbit true anomaly getting closer to the value it has at the point of New Moon at apogee (∠180°).
The length of the current synodic month is 2 hours shorter than the mean synodic month length. It is 4 hours and 9 minutes longer compared to 21st century's shortest synodic month length.
The true anomaly of the Moon orbit at the beginning of this lunation cycle is ∠359.8° and at the beginning of the next lunar synodic month the true anomaly is going to be ∠15.5°.
Moon is at perigee at 11:53 about 14 days since last apogee on 7 December 2003 at 12:05 in ♊ Gemini the lunar orbit is going to widen while the Moon is moving away from the Earth over the upcoming 12 days until point of next apogee on 3 January 2004 at 20:19 in ♉ Taurus.
This perigee Moon is 358 342 km (222 663 mi) away from Earth. It is 4 166 km closer than the mean perigee distance, but it is still 12 014 km further than the closest perigee of 21st century.
1 day after descending node on 20 December 2003 at 16:07 in ♏ Scorpio the Moon is positioned south of the ecliptic over the following 11 days until the lunar crosses the ecliptic again from South to North in ascending node on 2 January 2004 at 20:11 in ♉ Taurus.
11 days since the last northern standstill on 10 December 2003 at 15:56 in ♋ Cancer when the Moon has reached North declination of ∠27.057° the lunar orbit is extending southward over the next day to face maximum declination of ∠-27.044° at the point of next southern standstill on 23 December 2003 at 20:12 in ♑ Capricorn.
15 days since the beginning of this draconic month in ♉ Taurus the Moon is navigating from the second to the final part of the lunar cycle.
In 1 day on 23 December 2003 at 09:43 in ♑ Capricorn the Moon is going to be in a New Moon geocentric conjunction with the Sun and thus forming the next Sun-Moon-Earth syzygy alignment.
Parts of this Lunar Calendar are based on Planetary Ephemeris Data Courtesy of Fred Espenak, www.Astropixels.com
Moon phase image credit to NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, svs.gsfc.nasa.gov